PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER'S CLUB (EXETER)

Sir Frank Whittle OM FRS (1907-96)

Inventor of the jet engine.
The plaque is fixed to the north wall of the house known as
Walland Hill, near Chagford where Sir Frank lived for fourteen
years. The plaque is on private property but can be seen from
the adjacent lane.
The plaque was unveiled on Wednesday, 3 July 2002 by Ian
Whittle, Sir Frank's youngest son.
OS ref: SX693882

What do you want to be when you're grown up? An age-old question
but a hundred years ago, and for many years since then, a boy
would commonly answer 'an engine driver'. A girl might have said
'a nurse' and quite a number still would, thank goodness. Few
however would now choose to drive railway trains. The appeal of
controlling a heavy hurtling steam locomotive has now
disappeared except on a handful of historically reserved private
tracks as between Paignton and Kingswear.
Today's equivalent occupation for ambitious imaginative boys,
and of course girls too, might be to captain and pilot a
commercial airline 'Jumbo' or an A380 Airbus or a supersonic
military plane. The existence of that possibility owes more to
one English man than to any other single individual. He lived
from 1907 to 1996. His name is Frank Whittle. He was a
professional Engineer, a great inventor and an RAF pilot, and he
lived in Chagford, Devon, from 1963 to 1976.
Until Whittle came along aircraft were propeller-driven with the
power coming from internal combustion piston engines. Whittle
revolutionised aircraft by inventing and developing gas turbine
engines, both jet engines and turbo-props. We all now take for
granted the hundreds of thousands of civil and military aircraft
flying every day all over the world. Before Whittle's first
experimental jet aircraft flew in May 1941 there were none. In
less than one lifespan world travel has been changed from
thousands voyaging by ship, often for weeks on end, to millions
flying between countries and continents in hours. Of course,
many people have helped to bring about this astonishing change
but it was Whittle's imagination, inventive genius and
engineering skill which launched the transformation.
Whittle's father owned a small engineering business in
Leamington Spa, near Coventry, where the family lived. Frank won
a scholarship to Leamington College but he was not a star pupil
academically for he was too interested in aeroplanes and flight.
When he was sixteen, he won an apprenticeship with the RAF at
Cranwell. There he took great interest in aircraft design and
his final coursework project in 1928 was an essay on 'Future
Developments in Aircraft Design'. He concluded that a new type
of power plant was required to increase fighter aircraft speed
from about 150 mph to 500 mph. That was a fine target but he did
not then appreciate how it could be achieved. The idea of direct
jet propulsion did not occur to him until he had learned to fly
and been posted with a Commission to a flying instructor's
course as a trainee.
Whittle was a Chartered Engineer. He acquired that status after
first qualifying as a pilot in the RAF and before being sent on
a Service Engineering course and, in 1934, to Cambridge
University to undertake an Engineering Degree. Even before he
was transferred from flying to technical duties Whittle had made
his first masterly invention. It was to propel an aircraft by a
hot gas jet produced as the exhaust from a gas turbine. The
other function of that turbine was to drive through a common
shaft an air compressor; the outlet from the compressor led to a
combustion chamber and thence to the turbine. In order for this
concept to work, the compressor and turbine designs available at
the time had to be improved greatly and significantly better
heat-resistant materials had to be developed, particularly for
the combustion chamber and for the turbine blades.
Whilst he was still an RAF Officer in wartime Whittle was
allowed to form a Company, Power Jets, to work out solutions to
all the practical problems and several young Engineers were
directed to help him. One or two industrial firms were given
sub-contracts by Power Jets not only to find solutions to the
technical problems but also to build prototype engines. Over the
next decade, British Thomson-Houston, Rover,
Metropolitan-Vickers, de Havilland, Shell, Bristol Engines and
Rolls-Royce were introduced into the effort to turn the original
ideas into a practical proposition.
Because the project was being undertaken in wartime much secrecy
was involved. The first jet aircraft, for example, was
transported cross country on a truck under wraps. Since the
general shape gave away the fact that there was an aeroplane
under the covers, a false propeller was added to the front to
conceal the form of the air intake. The secret was well kept
until the flight of a prototype aircraft was achieved,
thereafter it became increasingly difficult to pretend all was
normal as the uniquely fast aeroplane with no propeller flashed
around the Midland skies. Success meant that experimental design
and development gave way to factory production. Before the war
ended in 1945 a new twin-jet-engined fighter, the Meteor,
capable of more than 600 mph, was in squadron service with the
RAF and since that time an increasing majority of aircraft built
around the world have been jet-propelled. All primarily based on
that first, and several other, inventions made by Whittle and
the Power Jets team.
His great idea of direct jet propulsion then came to him and he
shared his thoughts with the Instructor who taught him blind
flying. This was an amazing contact at a crucial time for the
Instructor, Flying Officer Patrick Johnson, was a young
qualified Patent Attorney unable, in those days, to practise his
profession until he became twenty five years of age. Johnson
explained to Whittle that making an invention is only the first
half of the story. Protecting one's right to it legally is at
once essential and has to be properly done. Whittle was
convinced. Johnson was willing to attend to all the formalities
and for the next ten years and more the two worked together so
that all the inventions of Whittle and of his Power Jets
colleagues were protected by patents throughout the industrial
nations of the world.
Those inventions were concerned with all aspects of design and
operation of the three main components of a jet engine, namely
the air compressor(s), the combustion system and the turbine(s).
Whittle personally made decisive improvements to compressor and
combustion chamber design. He also made a most imaginative
change to the basic layout of jet engines so that today they are
almost all of a 'by-pass' type. In this concept, dating from
1936, the air entering the engine is divided so that some passes
through the basic compressor, combustion and turbine stages but
a greater part 'by-passes' most of the compressor and the core
engine rejoining the engine stream in the propulsive jet. Such a
design has a considerably better propulsive efficiency than is
obtainable with a 'straight-through' jet, which is an important
consideration particularly for commercial aircraft. Higher
efficiency there means less fuel is needed, range is increased,
operating costs and fares can be reduced.
When Whittle first put forward his ideas not many supported
them. It was true that to carry them into effect there would
need to be a considerable support in well directed research and
development effort. Gradually, and then with more acceptance
under wartime pressure, greater priority was given by those in
authority to Whittle and to the Power Jets company. Once the
practicability of jet propelled aircraft had been demonstrated,
the importance and extent of the jet revolution became obvious.
Under wartime conditions great inventions of this kind were
shared between the Allies. Whittle found himself sending engine
drawings and performance calculations to the US Government
Agencies so that US industry could go into jet engine
production. Whittle himself was sent to the USA to explain his
work and his plans. A contract was placed by the American
Government on the General Electric Company to make a first batch
of engines to the British drawings. The foyer of the GE factory
office at Lynn Massachusetts, near Boston, contained, and
probably still does, a display of one of those engines. The
enormous resources of the USA meant that the US Air Force as
well as the RAF had jet fighters in service before World War II
ended.
By 1946 the jet engine 'baby' had outgrown its Power Jets
parent. Arrangements were made for that company to concentrate
on research and development, on disseminating gas turbine
technology and in world wide patent protection and licensing.
Whittle himself had been promoted to Air Commodore RAF and
knighted but it was difficult fo him to be incorporated into any
Service or Industrial structure. He retired from the RAF as his
wartime work and the enormous range of his innovations became
widely known.
Honours of all kinds flowed his way. In his own words '. . . at
home, I have a large collection of gold medals . . . .' In this
country he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal
Commission on Awards to wartime Inventors sponsored a grant to
him of £100,000 tax free, an enormous sum in those days and the
largest amount ever paid. In later years HM the Queen personally
made him a Member of the 'Order of Merit', a very great honour
indeed.
Whittle's later life was calmer and quieter than the pre-war and
wartime years had allowed. For example, the twelve years he
spent living at Chagford on the edge of Dartmoor were a period
of his life when he managed to keep himself out of the limelight
and certainly out of notice of the media. He was not, however, a
recluse; he made and kept friends and never lost touch with his
former Power Jets' colleagues. From time to time he suffered
ill-health but apart from those periods he continued to take
great interest in the aircraft industry and also in occasional
parallel ventures in co-operation with the Shell Company and
with Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd.
Whittle's greatest contributions had all come, however, in the
first half of his life. It was then that he was able to make
fundamental technical proposals, primarily through a gift of
imaginative perception. His proposals and inventions often came
in the form of 'obvious' solutions to problems which had defied
all efforts of others, sometimes for years. Such an ability is
not always welcomed by those 'others' and he had suffered more
than his fair share of their jealousy. It did not always help
his reputation with his professional colleagues that often he
simply could not comprehend their inability to see what he could
see. Also he was almost always right in his technical diagnoses.
To err is human, to be uncannily right most of the time is hard
to forgive!
During the wartime years Whittle was working under great
pressure in his unique capacity as a serving RAF Officer who was
simultaneously bringing about a technological revolution within
an established industry. Every day brought problems of all
kinds. Some were technical, others were human and personal and
much time was occupied coping with the Civil Service
bureaucratic machine. A ridiculous example of the latter is
found in the lengthy correspondence he exchanged with the RAF
Personnel Branch about the appropriate daily subsistence
allowance to which he was entitled when he was sent to the
United States. The rates for Washington and Boston were
different, so how did he divide his time? There were not many
more important people sent to co-operate with the Americans at
that time but he had to abide by all the rules and even as a
Wing Commander had to await his turn in the queue for a place in
a Liberator aircraft flying across the Atlantic!
From these comments it will be realised that although Whittle
was a 'Great Man' of abnormal ability he was not absolved from
everyday difficulties of life. Nevertheless his training as a
professional engineer provided a solid foundation for his
career. He chose to accept the discipline of study and the
acquisition of relevant experience over several years to achieve
the competence and status of a Chartered Engineer. Those
acquiring that recognition in the community are all engaged in
the application of science to the design, development and
operation of machinery, of technical equipment and of
construction works. There are various branches of Engineering in
which one can choose to specialise. In Whittle's case it was
Aeronautical. For others it might be Electrical, Mechanical,
Structural, Transport, Manufacturing. Without fully qualified
men and women working in all these fields of activity our lives
would be much the poorer and less interesting. And every young
Chartered Engineer has the prospect during his working life of
making significant changes to an industry or even to
transforming life for great numbers of people.
Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle OM FRS FREng did! We are all his
beneficiaries.
R C Orford